The archaeologist and the laboratory

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These strictures aside, the contents more than compensate for the flaws in presentation. This must be one of the most comprehensive studies ever written of an assemblage of stone artifacts. The introduction sets the scene, defining Dorestad as a large Early Medieval trading site near the present Dutch town of Wijk bij Duurstede, with a cemetery and harbour that was probably at its peak around 70&875 AD. An astonishing 10,000 rock fragmen@ were found in all, although only about 1500 had been worked. In the first, and perhaps the most interesting chapter, the 7@0 worked quern fragments are studied. All are made of tephrite, traceable to a single lava flow at Mayen, on the Laacher See, Eifel. Statistics show that the Dorestad querns were about 48 cm in diameter, with a thickness of either 3 or 7 cm-a bimodal histogram is presented. New querns-in all about 170-were 7 cm thick. When they reached 3 cm they usually broke, at the end of their useful life. Weights are the next artifacts discussed. Of the total of 78, 60 are of a trachytic tuff, also from the Laacher See area. It is shown that the weights were made of recycled building stones and pieces of sarcophagi, and were used for fishing, rather than weaving-loom weights, which were of baked clay. There is also a single stone well of the same trachytic tuff, the others being of wood. This last introduces a problem with which I am all too familiar: does one tackle stone artifacts according to use or material? This book employs a combination of the two, as I have done, seeing no better alternative. There are two “miscellany” chapters, on mixed artifacts of varied materials. The “soapstone”+hlorite schist-of two tuykres (furnace nozzles had been thermally metamorphosed: an interesting digression on thermometry demonstrates that they experienced temperatures of up to 1450°C. The second covers artifacts from other ages caught up in the Early Medieval assemblage. Two material-orientated chapters cover artifacts of limestone and amber. Some 5000 unworked fragments of amber accompany artifacts, which include lyre bridges for up to seven strings. The chapter discusses the problems of determining provenance by infra-red spectra or 13C/12C ratio, stressing the need for a great number of analyses to isolate convincing diagnostic variations. Function is the starting point for the chapter on grindstones and whetstones, which also includes lydite touchstones. There are Bundsandstein grindstones from the north Eifel-a very fruitful region for Dorestad-whilst river boulders of arenaceous rocks were used for the whetstones. Most probably stemmed from the now familiar sources: the Norwegian Eidsborg and “blue:’ phyllites, and the Kentish Ragstone. The final chapter, appropriately, summarizes the results in two locality maps and one huge table. Practically every rock type has its provenance, with an accuracy varying from the precise to the educated guess. Kars divides the artifacts into four categories. One illustrates large-scale trading of, for example, querns and Baltic amber. The second contains recycled Roman stone and the third early Dorestad stone, also re-used. The last is a small category, enclosing “foreigners” such as Neolithic axes and Late Medieval cannon balls. What is the value of such a work? In a developing area such as archaeological petrology, there is a need for as large as database as possible, and there is surely no more effective way of acquiring it than this. But the archaeologist also gains material for speculation on the commercial activities, trading routes and exchange mechanisms of people who lived a long time ago. What can reworked Roman material tell us about previous Roman occupation in the area, and what can petrological research, such as has been devoted to vitrified forts, say about early ore refining processes if applied to the tuyeres? All in all, a great deal of time has been well spent here on a book well worth publishing.

D. R. C. Kempe Department of Mineralogy British Museum (Natural History) The Archaeologist and the Laboratory. Edited by Patricia Phillips. 1985. vii+70 pp. 25 figures, 1 microfiche. Council for British Archaeology Research Report No. 58. London: C.B.A. g14.75. ISBN 0 906780 45 4. This is the publication the Oxford University

of papers given at a conference in Oxford in November Department of External Studies following an initiative

1983, organized by from the Archaeo-

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logical Science Committee of the C.B.A. The 15 papers included are very short, and though brevity has limited the usefulness of some, the number ensures that good value is given in cover of materials, technology and techniques of study and analysis. The materials discussed include stone, other building materials, ceramics, metals, metallurgical residues and vitreous materials, and inorganic modes of preservation of organic materials. Techniques dealt with include examination at magnifications ranging from the macroscopic characterization possible on site, through light microscopy in thin section for heavy mineral analysis and for metallography, to scanning electron microscopy; analysis by neutron activation analysis, atomic absorption, X-ray fluorescence and SEM-based micro-analysis; and dating by thermoluminescence and dendrochronology. Since the papers are variously material based and technique based, numerous interrelationships are present, and though some cross-referencing occurs, the volume would have benefited from much more. For example, when Warren refers to energy dispersive XRF in the study of brick and tile, the reader could have been referred to Freestone’s excellent description of what it is, which appears at the end of the volume. The papers also vary in their approach. Some use specific problems to illustrate use of a technique: Peacock on petrology and heavy mineral analysis and Aspinall on NAA, both applied to medieval pottery; Tite et al. on vitrification gradients in refractory ceramics for the determination of temperature and time in use of furnaces. Some survey work by various techniques applied to particular materials: Davis on implement petrology and Northover on metalwork; and Cowell and Bowman on provenancing and dating of flint. Others discuss the nature of the materials involved: Warren on building materials other than stone; Bayley on vitreous residues; Hunter on glass. Two topics which emerge from a number of papers and could have been drawn together for a more general discussion are sampling of inhomogeneous materials and the choice of methods of data analysis. The reader is given very little indication that either presents problems, and since both have their parallels in archaeology itself discussion of them could have been used to bring out the common ground in archaeological and scientific methodology. It is important to emphasize this common ground in a publication of this kind. Whether a set of papers delivered at a conference makes a good publication depends in part on the purpose of the conference. This one was set up with the particular purpose of acquainting archaeologists with methods of analysis applicable to some of the materials they encounter. These are therefore not research papers presented to fellow specialists, and the examples used in them have mostly been published elsewhere. We have to ask, then, whether the didactic purpose served by the conference is served as well by the book. Had there been textbooks which were both up to date and suitable in level of treatment for the audience envisaged, the need to hold the meeting would not have been felt, but these two quite distinct demands are not easily met in the same publication. The advantages of a conference of this kind are that it attracts those who really want to know, and they are predisposed to try to understand what is offered, and that audience response and discussion promote adjustment of presentation to the level of explanation needed. Some of the same material is bound to be less effective in print. Some topics require only clarity of exposition, equally achievable in print, rather than involving difficult concepts which need lengthy treatment. We can contrast Hillam’s excellent paper on tree rings, with the choice of a good example to illustrate dating and within-site chronological analysis, with Aspinall’s attempt at a brief explanation of neutron activation analysis to people whose knowledge of nuclear physics is likely to be slight. In the latter case one can imagine that the oral presentation, if copiously illustrated, would have been far more successful. Three of the papers are illustrated by colour photographs, but these are presented in microfiche. Imagine the archaeologist clutching a lump of what may well be one of Bayley’s slags, who may have read the paper and thought “I’ll look at the ‘fiche sometime”. Without the visual memory there’s small chance of recall of diagnostic features, and even if the book is to hand, the probability is that the microfiche reader won’t be. Microfiche may be more suitable for presentation of Davis’s micrographs illustrating textures of stone axe materials, but these are not in any way necessary to understanding of the text. The archaeologist will not be doing the petrological study and the petrologist will not be using this paper as a source, and anyway, the point could have been made as easily through black and white photographs and printed with the text. Bayley’s paper depends very heavily on the colour photographs, Davis’s doesn’t at all, and Warren doesn’t refer to his in the text, though they illustrate his description of materials and techniques used in painted wall

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plaster very well. Editor and publisher need to give much more thought to the purpose of each illustration in making the economic decisions concerning use of microfiche. A microfiche like this is too, a prime candidate for the “filched fiche” syndrome (please, precious reader of JAS, not YOU). This publication will undoubtedly be found very useful by archaeologists and, particularly, students. It demonstrates very well the range of techniques available, and provides useful cautionary notes, such as Davis’s warning of pitfalls in implement petrology, as well as forward looking proposals, such as Reece’s call for an extensive suck-it-and-see approach to the analysis of coins (which will offend slaves to the doctrine that if it’s not problem-orientated it’s not science) and Northover’s appeal for a thorough integration of archaeological and all kinds of technological and analytical studies of metal artifacts. The papers, though short, mostly serve their purpose, and only the C.B.A. style detracts from the quality of documentation. Have those responsible ever tried to expand the abbreviation of a journal title in a field or a language remote from their own, even with the aid of stops to tell them which bits are indeed abbreviations? Have they never tried to trace a book without publisher and place of publication? Why should the reader have to go to other sources to get bibliographic details right?

Susan Limbrey Department ?f’Ancient History & Archaeology University of Birmingham

The Archaeology of Frontiers and Boundaries. Edited 1985. xviii+344 pp., tables, figures, index. New Archaeology Series). E49.50. ISBN 0 12 298780 2.

by S. W. Green and S. Perlman. York: Academic Press (Studies in

The collection of 13 papers published in this latest Studies in Archaeology volume stems from “an organized attempt of like-minded individuals” who participated in a Society for American Archaeology symposium in Tucson, Arizona in 1978. The main contention is that human cultures are modelled, described or analysed as closed systems by archaeologists and anthropologists, whereas both empirical and theoretical arguments can be marshalled to show that cultures are open systems, with flows of matter, energy and information between them. The processes of change are not confined neatly within the boundaries of these units and even within less complex societies may involve supra-regional interaction. Case-studies are divided into foragers, pastoralists and subsistence farmers on the one hand and complex societies on the other. The models used range from the cost-benefit analyses of optima1 foraging theory through the world systems models derived from Immanuel Wallerstein to one example of the new mentalism. Two introductory chapters, by the editors and by Justeson and Hampson, present the open-closed system dichotomy and argue for the importance of studying frontiers and boundaries. There then follow five papers on non-complex societies. Perlman uses optimal foraging theory to argue for an open-systems approach to hunter-gatherers studies, particularly relating subsistencerelated mobility costs to group sizes. It is the very restrictions which these costs place upon group sizes that determine the need for extensive, open-system networks of biological and social reproduction. The costs of mobility also figure prominently in Moore’s simulations of forager-farmer interactions. Even with low population densities, the presence of farming communities is shown to yield increases in the locational costs of hunters and gatherers. The subsequent growth of formalized interaction, in the form of meat-grain exchanges, between the foragers and the farmers is seen as a mechanism for reducing mobility constraints and for increasing the sharing of information. An inevitable consequence is the fusion of foragers and farmers into one system. Dennell approaches this problem of forager-farmer interactions from a less formalized perspective and uses data from prehistoric temperate Europe. Analogies for the Neolithic colonization of Europe from 18th and 19th century America and Australasia are found wanting (e.g. the differences in scale of agricultural organization and political centralization) and, among several possible scenarios, he argues for forager-farmer interaction occurring through the mechanism of young and sub-adult foragers attracted to the bright lights of farming villages. Dennell does not devote much space to variability in the duration of frontiers, a topic examined by Yesner in relation to the Aleut-Eskimo